Analog
by anais mark
Summary: Not all love stories end in forever, but they might give you something just as important.
1. Waylaid

_**Disclaimer:**_ These are SM's characters, not so much what I've done with them.

* * *

Not all great stories end in a happily ever after. It pained me to think of what great stories we had and how badly it ended. Fantastic stories should have a gorgeous ending, shouldn't they?

* * *

No twenty-year-old girl thinks she's lucky in love. We obsess. We call and hang up. We exist off scraps of hearsay gleaned from his friends. But we don't think that finding love will be easy.

Because I expected no better for myself than what others got, I whined only nominally.

I did all the stereotypical things—conduct that borders on criminal stalking, if I'm honest with myself—but it was an age before you could Google a name and find out more than you ever wanted to know. Love in an analog world was different. It required legwork.

For me, the legwork was often literal. My "game" was, in fact, gamesmanship. I was one of the guys, and it worked for me. I drank microbrews and rock-climbed. I played tackle football and wore my wounds with pride. I got us backstage at rowdy concerts.

One night, I fixed a friend up with a nice guy—safe, polite and sexy. I called Jasper for a drink and said a friend of mine was going that he might like, Charlotte.

We met at a dive bar on the beach. After a few hours of pool and darts, I was thinking of letting them get to know one another without my interference. Reality had other plans.

As I crossed the parking lot around midnight, I wondered what all the ruckus was. My car was festooned in police tape and the back window lay in a glittering pile on the bench seat.

I approached the officer writing on a clipboard. "So I guess I won't be tossing my purse in the backseat before my walk on the beach, huh?"

The officer looked to be my dad's age. "We'll be done in about an hour. If you need a ride, one of us can drop you off at home."

"No, it's okay. I'll just put it in a friend's car. Can I ask what happened?"

"Two guys got in a fight—one went to the hospital. The jerk who put him there spun out in his hurry to leave and busted your rear window with an oyster shell. We're just getting some fingerprints to support what the witnesses saw. Like I said, we'll be done in an hour or so. The window is the only damage that I can tell."

"Don't hurry. I'll be back in a couple of hours. Do you need me to sign anything?"

"No. As long as this information is correct, Miss Swan," he held out a form with my registration information, "then I don't need anything. We'll only contact you if something out of the ordinary comes up. What's your name and date of birth?"

I told him and handed over my ID for good measure.

"Then this is you. Be careful, kid."

"Yes, sir. Thanks. Good night."

They'd noticed the flashing lights and were waiting for me by the door. Charlotte said, "I'm way too buzzed to want to go home and you're not going anywhere for a while. Wanna walk on the beach with us?"

I hadn't minded being their training wheel early in the evening, and I'd done my job well. They should have been coasting on their own by then, and I should have let them, but it was early September which meant that school started back in about a week.

Hell, yes I _wanted_ to walk on the beach at midnight.

"I don't want to be a party crasher. You two go on and I'll have a cup of coffee at the Waffle Shop while they process my car."

He said, "That's stupid, Bella. Come with us."

Ten minutes later we were all swimming in our underwear, sipping Johnny Walker from the bottle. That's what we did. It was the late nineties and we didn't live in a big town, we lived in a vacation town that was merely days away from being an empty destined for the recycle bin.

God, but did I ever want that summer to last forever, to linger on and on. Not for any existential reason or because I loved summer (though I am a summer-lover), but because I'd hit a wall and I didn't know how to keep myself balanced without any forward momentum. My major wasn't working for me. I'd completed too many general education classes to milk another semester of them from my scholarship, and I hadn't enrolled in any classes for the next semester. Not a one.

My parents didn't know that last detail. Only I knew that last detail.

After a life full of certainty and successful coasting, I didn't know my role anymore. How could I be the well-adjusted ray of sunshine, parked front-and-center in almost every class, every answer at the ready, if I weren't actually in a class? What the hell was I going to be when I grew up if I couldn't be that girl?

My two friends had jobs. For them, this wasn't just another summer night, it was a weekend night and they didn't have to work tomorrow. He had a wallet full of cash because it was payday. She was ecstatic to be sleeping in the next day.

I drifted indolently in comparison.

We settled on the beach, falling into a haphazard pile like driftwood on the white sand, waiting to be set ablaze.

I watched them talking, the self-expositional conversation that a good first date usually elicits, fueled by a few drinks. Their harmless confessions melted into the balmy air. At what point would I tell her that I dreamt of this boy almost nightly? That I was attaching him to a friend so that he would be off-limits? _Hopefully never_, I thought with a cringe.

We told stories and passed the bottle. She had lived a thousand miles away for long enough that we didn't know her story and we let her talk the most, enjoying the novelty.

I had his head in my lap and hers was across his legs. She mentioned that I sang at a bar on a dare. Events spiraled downward from there.

She mumbled, "Sing that song again. You know the one…I can never remember names."

I felt him chuckle though no sound came out. "I shoulda brought my guitar. It's in the Jeep."

"No. I don't want to sing. I'd feel silly all by myself."

She insisted, whining. "Please. I'm sleepy and I want to take a nap here while we dry off. Besides, you can't drive home yet."

It was true; the pulsing blue and red lights were still visible through the sea oats. So I took a breath and started the Sarah McLachlan song she liked, uncomfortably. At least it was dark and they weren't sober.

He turned his head to the side, his nose touching my belly, and hummed along as I sang. I was miserable. Why had I thought this disaster would work? I needed to stay away from him the way paper wings should avoid rainy days. We'd never fly.

I could feel him swallow and breathe. When he moved I had to force myself to remain still instead of flinching. Concentrating on singing and being motionless, I didn't initially realize that he was moving on purpose. His nose grazed my stomach again and, as he turned his head, the underside of my breast.

Why now?

I was leaning back, buttressed by my arms and he slid a hand around to the small of my back. My eyes squeezed shut. Her breathing had evened out into the lazy cadence of sleep. I'd done the lullaby thing before. If you stopped singing as soon as the baby dozed they'd be crying again in a heartbeat, so I started another song.

His hand moved towards the front of my shirt—actually, his shirt—and he began playing with the curve of my waist, my ribs, my jaw. As I hummed a segue, he put his salty finger to my lips and they parted.

Damned traitors.

I finally let myself look down and he was staring at me. I stopped singing so that I could put an end to this madness.

"I can't." The sound barely traveled beyond my lips.

"Why not?" At least it reached its target.

I glanced over at my snoozing friend.

If a conniving kid elbow-deep in a cookie jar could've conjured a smile so disarming, they'd spoil their supper every night with all their contraband.

"Just sing to me, songbird."

His wish, my command.

"_For you there will be no more crying. For you, the sun will be shining…_."

I wanted to be outraged, to feel used and righteously angry. I'd pursued this boy every way I knew how: flirtatiously, circumspectly, disdainfully, sweetly. I did my research and knew who he hung out with and where they were. I tried to make it look as if he were following me, leaving a place as he entered, lending a book to his sister that I knew he'd want to read, having an extra ticket to a sold-out show.

Despite my best efforts, he was like Teflon. Nothing stuck.

He knew I was crazy about him. Hell, every person of our acquaintance (save my new friend slumbering contentedly against his long legs) knew I could not help myself where he was involved.

Clearly he knew I could not help myself either. I sang on like a caged bird. Why not, right?

As long as I sang, he touched me: he licked the salt crystallizing on my stomach, traced the heavy dip of the undersides of my breast, let his eyelashes tickle my bare skin. I even took requests from my very small audience.

My sleeping friend snored, causing the two of us to quake with silent laughter. "I should take her home."

"Don't."

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask why not, but I knew I wouldn't get an explanation from this maddening boy so I wagered a little more of my heart on a few more moments. He'd never call me. He'd be kind and funny but slippery as an eel. I already knew the drill.

On paper, every single thing about us was right. He was a smart, sexy, velvet-voiced Calvin-Klein-model-doppelganger of a boy. He could see that. And that drawl…it made me reconsider my gargantuan effort to suppress my own. If we weren't happening, then I assumed something was wrong with me.

"When do you start back to school?"

"I'm supposed to start in ten days."

"You say that like you're not."

"I just don't know what I want to be when I grow up and signing up for unnecessary classes seems like such a waste. That's a lot of money for my parents to spend on my uncertainty."

"So take a semester off."

"And do what?"

"That's a good question. You know that you're the smartest girl I know? Maybe the smartest person I know. You'll figure it out."

"Did you polish off that bottle of Red Label while I wasn't looking?"

"Really. What happened with you and…what happened last year was shitty and I think someone needs to say something nice to you. And it's true."

"Now I'm gonna cry."

"There's nothing wrong with crying, but you're not a crier." His long fingers wound themselves in the hair at the base of my head. My eyes closed as he staked his claim in my damp hair.

I knew before he kissed me that he was going to give me something to cry about. The sobbing wouldn't happen immediately, since I couldn't think of anything more delicious at that moment than the salt-rimmed taste of whiskey on his lips, but I knew it would sting later.

He put his head back in my lap.

I heard my friend stir and I sang another song as he nipped and licked at his leisure.

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_**Author's Note: **_Metaphysics it's not. I'm working on this when the mood strikes (more often, now that I've seen some warmth). I expect eight chapters, none too long.

Any resemblance to real life characters is purely coincidental, but excuse in advance the lack of cellular devices and prevalence Friends haircuts.


	2. Nightswimming

_**Disclaimer:** These characters aren't mine. _

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Coming clean with my parents went swimmingly. They were surprisingly supportive of my sudden lack of direction, almost as if they didn't quite see it as such. A local hospital hired me to do menial work in their OR. I jumped at the chance to rub up against people who were doing something that seemed to require conviction, hoping that I might find a spare ounce or two lying around.

A few weeks into my new job, I was leaving a concert with my best friend and her new husband. We'd run into a group we knew and, of course, _he_ was with them. After getting singed by our last meeting, I steered clear. I didn't need to spend another week reeking like the smoky remains of a bonfire that burned large and hot on the beach for but an evening to learn my lesson. I was due for a proper burn from him if I persisted in this madness, more painful that just being seduced and ignored one beautiful drunken night.

How we ended up nightswimming with his group was beyond me; I'd arrived with just my two friends. And such certainty.

There were a dozen or so of us in the water and I was diligent about using them as human shields, parrying every time he moved between the few small groups of conversation. The Gulf might as well have been an inkwell, and he surprised me by surfacing not a foot away. We hadn't even said a greeting.

He nodded at my retreating, now-former, best friend and her hubby. "They said to tell you they'd be right back. I promised to ward off predators."

"That includes you?"

I could see his teeth in the scant light. "I won't bite too hard. You're okay with nibbling, if I remember right."

It felt like a dare and I couldn't back down even though I should have. I dipped beneath the water—slowly, as if I were descending into a vat of honey—and grazed his stomach with my teeth. I surfaced only enough to get my nose above the surface to take a breath. I sat like a gator, with only my head from the nostrils up above the water.

His hands wrapped around my ribs possessively. As if I could belong to anyone else. It had been long enough since the last time he kissed me that the snapping static was still there. We lingered in the kiss, not speaking. Not acknowledging the world beyond our warm bubble of seawater. He eased his mouth from mine by degrees, putting some scant space between our faces. Below the waterline, out of sight, no such separation existed.

With the water to help support me, he lifted me to float on my back. I laughed softly, nervously, wondering what he was about. I felt like a child learning to swim.

He skimmed me across the water; I closed my eyes. The water ran across my stomach in rivulets and caressed my periphery in lapping waves. I sighed, reveling in the sweet feeling.

A warmer lapping began in the center of my chest and I slowed to a halt, floating idly. He'd turned me into a floating smorgasbord. Having nothing to feed on myself, I felt conspicuous. I'd never had someone want to be allowed to consider me so unabashedly. I bit my lip anxiously.

He finally put his mouth just above mine and whispered, "I thought you were okay with nibbling. I won't bite hard; you can relax."

I realized that my limbs resembled wooden paddles more than jellyfish tentacles. "Promise?"

"That, I can promise."

Okay, so there were things he couldn't promise. No surprise there. With his admission clearing the air, I did relax.

The taunting resumed at my hairline. When my mother kissed my forehead my eyes didn't roll back in my head. But when he did I wondered if I would duck away from the next familial affection aimed above my eyes.

He murmured and hummed, the sound trickling from his lips telling me about everything and nothing at all. His words were song lyrics or comments on our company this evening at first. Between them and the audible sway of the seawater, the potentially-awkward quiet was filled with the sounds of my dreams. I wanted so much to tell him—he deserved to know that I dreamt of his baritone reading to me and laughing softly as we played at nothing important. I didn't mention it, because talking about things that mattered was strictly off-limits. That the rule was unspoken didn't make it any less real.

"What did your parents say when you told them about school?" He found a safe subject first, _the_ safe subject.

"They seemed almost glad that I wanted to take a year off. My dad felt like I was making myself into the square peg…or is the hole square? Whatever the case, he thought I'd been on the same path for so long that I was just sticking with it out of habit and not because I really wanted it anymore."

"Any progress on that front? The 'what you really want' front?"

I watched him drag the nail-side of his fingers up both my thighs and thought of a few answers to that question. "Not exactly. I do like being in an OR but it's barely been two weeks."

"That's really great. I can see you doing that…it makes sense."

His fingers reached my underwear—dark and opaque bikinis, thankfully—and I wanted to turn his question on him. Lacking the courage to ask outright and the finesse to hint deftly, I let that sleeping dog lie.

Still playing with the string of my bikini, he rotated me so that my hipbone touched the center of his chest and lowered his face to the string. With his incisors, he moved the strap south an inch or two and amused himself by lapping at the strip of skin uncovered. The point of the dark scrap of fabric wasn't to protect my hipbone. He never violated what it was protecting; he did everything but.

In what amounted to a mockery of my modesty, he used his mouth to return the strap to its original position.

"I think you're evil."

He grinned at me. "I don't think that's a recent conclusion."

"No. Just recently reinforced."

Nodding to the shore, he asked, "Emmett and Rose are walking back towards us. Do you want to go in?"

"No."

"Yeah. Me either. I don't want you getting away from me just yet."

He pulled us into deeper water. Standing flat-footed, the subtle swells crested above his shoulders and dipped to his belly, taking me with them. I took the opportunity to lock my legs around his waist at one trough.

"You're playing with fire, missy."

"Braggart."

His flattened hands slid up my stomach, pushing my wet tank as they traveled. It was over my head in a matter of seconds. Water and warm air washed back and forth deliciously.

"I don't even know where to start." A single finger trailed from my navel to the hollow of my throat, lazy and considering as it meandered. Did I get a vote on its destination? I had opinions. Strong opinions.

Jasper gathered me to his chest, sinking down in the warm water with me. "You're shivering, Bella."

I hadn't noticed. I hadn't been aware of anything but what he was doing. "I'm not even cold."

"Just to be on the safe side, let's get you in."

"No. Really. No reason to leave." Rather than chance a retort, I kissed him speechless. It was effective.

I could hear my friends approaching and I wanted to put up a "Do Not Disturb" sign. Instead, I ducked under the water and put my shirt back on.

"I'm so sleepy, B. You ready to go?" Rose was clearly giving Jasper the opportunity to stake a claim if he so desired.

I paused just a beat—long enough for the helium-filled possibility of him offering me a ride to float up up and away—before agreeing to ride home with them. Rose and Em walked ahead, hopefully unaware of what hadn't just transpired.

I ducked under and scrubbed the mortification from my face before I resurfaced. By the time I sucked in a breath, hope—deaf, blind and mute—had resumed control and was all that colored my thoughts.

Confidently, I kissed him—a weapon of a kiss, the hungry sort of taking meant to be remembered with a sting rather than a sigh.

When I pulled away, I got only a few paces between us before he pulled me back. "You…you really shouldn't have done that."

"I wanted to."

Something about my admission sobered him up, his lust-drunk gaze lightening into one less threatening. "Let's get you home."

Seriously? What about being wanted could be a turn-off?

* * *

Rose waited until I was relatively sober to ask.

"What the hell was going on out there with you and Jasper? You know Mike will shit a brick when he finds out."

"Um, nothing was going on so there will be no need for brick shitting, not that he doesn't deserve some ass trauma."

She scrunched her perfect little nose in genuine disgust. "Ewwww."

"I grossed myself out. Sorry."

My comment hadn't thrown her off course. She was like a sister to me and I knew better than to think it would. "Your gloriously naked breasts shimmering in the moonlight was nothing?"

I covered my face with my hands. "Oh, God. No."

"I distracted Emmett. He never saw them."

"Thank you so much."

"It was as much for my own benefit as yours. He'd never want to play with these again if he'd seen yours." She bounced her girls in the palms of her hands, in case I was uncertain which "these" she meant. I giggled, my buzz not entirely erased yet.

"My shirt was only off for like half a minute."

"Oh. Okay then. If that's all." She glared at me and then rolled her eyes. "I think the events leading up to the nudity are the big deal, darling."

"The usual: some kissing, not much talking. Not a big deal."

"Fine. Play it this way. But he's gonna break your heart and I'm gonna be forced to kick his ass."

"It's not like that. He's not pretending that we're a thing. He's not leading me on."

"Oh, please. He knows you've liked him for like ever. Just cashing in on that to make out with you once is wrong. If it happens a second time, I'm going to have words with him."

Technically, "again" wouldn't be the second time….

"Fair enough."

"I'm laying down the law now because he's going with us to the Island for Labor Day."

I wanted to do a victory dance, but I carried my bluff. "I might have to work that day."

"No you don't. Don't lie to me." It was a date.

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_**A/N:**_ In my opinion, it's not the size of the vessel-er, chapter-but the motion in the ocean. I hope you are down with the motion. The chapter title is a nod to REM. I have a feeling this Bella would've listened to it. Ahem.

As always, my undying love to the sexiest comma ninja the world has ever known, Clem. Also, Denver Popcorn smacked me around a little too.

Let me know what you think, darlings.

"Nightswimming" lyrics:

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night, deserves a quiet night

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night  
The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago,  
Turned around backwards so the windshield shows  
Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse  
Still, it's so much clearer  
I forgot my shirt at the water's edge  
The moon is low tonight

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night  
I'm not sure all these people understand  
It's not like years ago,  
The fear of getting caught,  
Of recklessness and water  
They cannot see me naked  
These things, they go away,  
Replaced by everyday

Nightswimming, remembering that night  
September's coming soon  
I'm pining for the moon  
And what if there were two  
Side by side in orbit  
Around the fairest sun?  
That bright, tight forever drum  
Could not describe nightswimming

You, I thought I knew you  
You, I cannot judge  
You, I thought you knew me,  
This one laughing quietly underneath my breath  
Nightswimming

The photograph reflects,  
Every streetlight a reminder


End file.
